


On the Table

by sister_coyote



Series: On the Table [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Flirting, Gambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-24
Updated: 2007-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 19:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sister_coyote/pseuds/sister_coyote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Havoc has to admit, she's the last one he expected to sit down across from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Table

Havoc has to admit, she's the last one he expected to sit down across from him.

"You gamble?" he asks, and the look Hawkeye gives him is steel-cold, certain. She doesn't answer because she doesn't have to: of course she gambles. Why else would she sit down?

She gambles every day.

One two three cards each, and then one on the table, and one face-down beside it. It's a Rush Valley variant. They play for beers at first, but after a few rounds neither of them wants to get drunk, so they switch to money. Small denominations.

She's getting bored.

"Raise the stakes?" he asks.

She gives him a long, steady look. "What're you thinking of?"

What she gambles for every day is blood and iron; there's not much that can top that. No wonder she's bored. He's not stupid enough to suggest sexual favors, either. It's not so much that she'd shoot him in the balls—all the guys at Central joke about that, Iron Maiden Hawkeye, but he knows her better. She'd just walk away. Get up, shove her pile of change at him, and leave. And he doesn't want that.

"Truths," Havoc says. It could sound like something a teenage girl would suggest, and he braces himself, but she doesn't take it like that. She nods.

"You're on," she says.

Their first hand after that, she's got a high queen, which tops his high ten, so he discards his hand and says, "I'm afraid. I'm really afraid of what's coming down. It's not manly to say so, but it's true."

She nods. She does not mock him. He is grateful.

The next hand, he has two pair. She looks at her losing hand for a long time, and then says, "I do not regret the course I am on, but there is more to me than my goal."

His heart is in his throat, as though he were the one revealing a truth.

Shuffle, cut, deal. Third hand.

She has a royal flush. He puts his finger on the queen, and says nothing, and swallows, and wonders if he will be able to speak.

"You're beautiful," he says, finally, despite the fact that he only had two beers and the last one was nearly an hour before.

Hawkeye looks at him so hard, a muscle ticking in her jaw, that he thinks that she might walk away now, walk away and never sit down with him again. He holds his breath. He has never laid so much out on the table. He is not a high-stakes roller; it terrifies him.

Then she leans across the table, seizes the front of his shirt and kisses him, hard, hard enough that he tastes blood and puts his hands on her shoulders for balance.

She pulls away, and she _still_ looks severe, hard, beautiful. "If you are playing with me," she says, low, serious, "I will tell everyone that you cheat at cards."

He kisses her again. She tastes like blood and iron and good fortune.


End file.
